Transcripción

1 CULTURAL TRANSVESTISM IN THE WORKS OF CATALINA DE ERAUSO AND MAYRA SANTOS-FEBRES by SHANYE CRAWFORD (Under the Direction of Luís Correa-Díaz) ABSTRACT La historia de la Monja Alférez is the autobiography of Catalina de Erauso, a Basque woman whose vital options under the rigid norms of the 17th century are the convent or marriage. Written by Mayra Santos-Febres, Sirena Selena vestida de pena is a contemporary novel about a young boy whose femininity makes him sexually vulnerable. Both characters overcome their peripheral sexual identities by way of transvestism. The transvestite s sexuality functions as a social and cultural construct [whose] sexual asymmetry, as a cultural construction, can be altered (Frese xi). In spite of their deliberate reconstruction, few studies overcome the transvestite s sexual prescription. The purpose of this thesis is to amplify what seems to be the restricted dialogue of transvestism. The transvestite s literary reconstruction reveals an understated social and political value. Transvestism is more than an individual experience of perversion or deviance, [ ] it is therefore an informative and interesting ingredient of the iconography of gender (Suthrell 26). INDEX WORDS: El Travestismo, La Auto-Afirmación, El Vestido, Catalina de Erauso, Mayra Santos-Febres, El Caribe

2 CULTURAL TRANSVESTISM IN THE WORKS OF CATALINA DE ERAUSO AND MAYRA SANTOS-FEBRES by SHANYE CRAWFORD B.A., The University of Georgia, 2004 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GA 2007

3 2007 Shanye Crawford All Rights Reserved

4 CULTURAL TRANSVESTISM IN THE WORKS OF CATALINA DE ERAUSO AND MAYRA SANTOS-FEBRES by SHANYE CRAWFORD Major Professor: Luis Correa-Díaz Committee: Lesley Feracho Dana Bultman Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2007

7 2 De acuerdo con Radtke, Only natural superiority can morally justify privilege in a particular group of humans, for only inborn capacities do not change [ ] to claim superiority is automatically to degrade all others, assigning them a subhuman category (28). Por lo tanto, el privilegio tiene una deliberada construcción social. Según Frese, power structures are based upon complex systems of prestige which rest on obligations of reciprocal duties which are interactive between every level of a social hierarchy, from the highest to the lowest. These responsibilities invest the entire social structure with a stabilizing legitimacy because that legitimacy is both drawn from and reiterated throughout the hierarchy. (59) El género es uno de muchos determinantes del estatus cultural. Conforme a Frese, prestige structures, or the social value assigned to the gender categories and symbols [ ] [are] an important part of the legitimating ideology and [perpetuate] society and gender beliefs (xiii). Consideramos a los Erausos, los cuales gave their sons to the conquest and their daughters to the convent, [ ] to be reared and educated- for marriage if a likely match presented itself, for a nun s life if it did not (Stepto xxvii). Parecida a Erauso, su sexo es justo lo que determina el valor social de Selena. Ella relata así los intercambios de su profesión, Ellos llegaban y me abrían la puerta de sus carros sabiendo de antemano que yo iba a entrar, [ ] que yo iba a dejar la mano temblorosa acercarse a donde se acercaba, que iba a pasar lo de siempre, esa hinchazón debajo del pantalón, ese susto deleitoso, esas ganas de llorar, esa quemazón de saliva, esa lágrima a medias en el ojo, esas ganas de morirse ahí mismito. [ ] Después vendría el endurecimiento de la cara del tipo, luego que descubría, pero no decía, lo que

9 4 transvestism was frequently seen as a way of escape for young males who were unable to maintain an assertive masculine role (23). En vez de sufrirla Selena explota su inclinación mujeril. En ambas obras la sexualidad se ve como una social and cultural construct [whose] sexual asymmetry, as a cultural construction, can be altered (Frese xi). A pesar de su deliberada reconstrucción, pocos estudios trascienden la prescripción sexual del travesti. De acuerdo con Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Transvestism is an act that penetrates and tampers with those who witness it. [ ] [It] is about the raw touching, gentle tampering, and, literally, fucking up of any fixed notions of genders. Transvestism is the figure that describes in its own embodiment and realization the difficulty of gender (2). Por lo general, la penetración se atribuye al hombre. Conforme a su asociación masculina, el estudio del travestismo suele incorporar los elementos típicamente femeninos. De acuerdo con Charlotte Suthrell, Soft, [ ] with all its implications of mutability and yieldingness, is most definitely a trait most desirable in a stereotypical woman in this culture. [ ] of all the adjectives used by transvestites to define both the qualities of femaleness to which they aspire and the clothing which they most like to wear, soft or softness recur by far the most often (135,136). Además de una etiqueta masculina, Sifuentes-Jáuregui también imbuye el travestismo con un carácter representativo. Los que atestiguan el acto suelen considerarlo como un fenómeno imaginario. Según Richard Docter, when a transvestite dresses as a woman and presents himself in public as a woman he is usually not much concerned with comfort, convenience, or protection afforded by his feminine wrappings. What he wants most is to be successful in

10 5 appearing [ ] to be a member of the feminine gender and to experience whatever subjective feelings accompany the reported pleasure he derives from enacting his cross-gender identity fantasy. (40) El estudio del travestismo abarca tanto la fantasía como la perversión. Conforme a Docter, cognitive determinants are critical factors in the structuring of behavior. It is the beliefs, the expectations, the self-appraisals, the gender perceptions, the information processing, and the sexual script of a person which can lead toward unusual presentations of self, as in transvestism (vi). Según Docter, our society experiences discomfort with anything that is strongly sexual. Despite the so-called sexual revolution, ours is a sex-negative society, full of value judgments and inhibitions whenever sexual topics arise (4). Por lo tanto, muchas veces la desviación consta de los aspectos sexuales. Consideramos a la homosexualidad, la cual appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species (Foucault 43). Su establecimiento literario facilita su condenación cultural. De acuerdo con Foucault, The machinery of power that focused on this whole alien strain did not aim to suppress it, but rather to give it an analytical, visible, and permanent reality [ ] Not the exclusion of these thousand aberrant sexualities, but the specification, the regional solidification of each one of them (4). De acuerdo con Foucault, it is in the nature of power- particularly the kind of power that operates in our society- to be repressive, and to be especially careful in repressing useless energies, the intensity of pleasures, and irregular modes of behavior

11 6 (9). Parecido al homosexual, la degradación literaria del travesti refleja su represiva construcción cultural. Aunque pocos estudios trascienden su tipificación perversa, el travestismo is more than an individual experience of perversion or deviance, [ ] it is therefore an informative and interesting ingredient of the iconography of gender (Suthrell 26). Distinto de otros estudios, éste considera sus implicaciones socio-políticas. Según Dave King, in addition to studying deviant behaviour and persons, it is equally and perhaps more necessary to study the processes of social control which define behaviour and people as deviant and deal with them accordingly. [ ] such definitions and control strategies [are] not simply reflections of given deviant phenomena but [ ] products of social, cultural and political processes. (4) Conforme a su ilustración, naming has political implications. By devising a linguistic category with specific connotations, one is designing armaments for a battle; by having it accepted and used one has scored a major victory (Goode, 1969, p.89) (King 12). Respecto al travestismo, esta tesis atribuye tanto su constitución como su condena a una dicotomía de sexo y poder. El poder y el género son terms so commonly conjoined that their combined invocation has almost ceased to be indexical (Radtke 1). Su frecuente asociación enmascara deliberada injusticia social. Además del travesti, the binary sex/gender system, the exclusive division of the world into men and women, is oppressive [...] indeed to men and women who consider themselves properly sexed and gendered (Namaste 6). Respecto a la prescripción sexual, el segundo capítulo trata tanto su constitución como sus consecuencias. For those who do not accept the two traditional genders [ ] as essential, immutable, trans-historical, categorical truth(s), the systematic

13 8 make inner states and behaviours material and observable- it is about the presentation of the body together with embodiment in material culture. (24) Después de dar un repaso, este capítulo plantea una extensión cultural del travestismo. Según Barradas, lo considera como un espejo de la organización de la sociedad en el Caribe y en América Latina: sus ciudades son travestis que se visten de Primer Mundo adoptan los usos y las maneras que no les corresponden a fin de escapar de su realidad a acercarse de lo que cada día se ve más lejos: el progreso y la civilización (Guemes s.p.) (7). Además de introducir las obras, este capítulo ha intentado resumir lo que parece ser el restringido estudio del travestismo. Según Foucault, when a group of people are separated from society it is not a random affair. They are discerningly divided off from the population, through discursive and exclusionary exercises of sovereign power, and subjected to disciplinary techniques which classify and control them through strategic power relations (Radtke 43). En cuanto al travesti, el próximo capítulo trata los catalizadores sociales detrás de su divergente establecimiento literario. Según Frese, culturally constructed concepts of gender have strongly influenced scientific research in a number of areas, and that presuppositions about gender-appropriate behaviors have influenced the explanations that scientists find in raw data. In turn, once given scientific verification and sanction, these conclusions have perpetuated gender constructs in societal values and beliefs. Rather than being independent of gender bias, science has thus been affected by and has influenced biased conceptions of behavior in males and females. (7)

14 9 Respecto a las represivas instituciones culturales y socio-políticas que nos forman, su revisión obliga tanto su reconocimiento como su negación. De acuerdo con Ben Sifuentes- Jáuregui, transvestite subjects do not necessarily imagine themselves becoming some other subject, but rather they may conceive of transvestism as an act of self-realization. [ ] Transvestism is an operating system that deconstructs a specific normality in a gender binary and hierarchy [ that] takes place not only on the level of negation and différance, but seemingly, of production and sameness. (4)

15 10 CAPITULO 2 UNA HISTORIA DE PRESCRIPCION SOCIAL Conforme a Foucault, la sexualidad is the name that can be given to a historical construct: not a furtive reality that is difficult to grasp, but a great surface network in which the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the incitement to discourse, the formation of special knowledges, the strengthening of controls and resistances, are linked to one another, in accordance with a few major strategies of knowledge and power. (106) De acuerdo con su ilustración, la identidad sexual tiene una deliberada construcción cultural. Según Suthrell, Sex has conventionally come to mean the differences between the biological patterning of males and females whilst gender is seen as the social and cultural attributes of masculine and feminine (21). Conforme a su ilustración, el género determina los parámetros de la sexualidad. Por lo general, la masculinidad embodies role behaviors such as success and status, toughness and independence, aggressiveness and dominance. [ ] in contrast to femininity; acting male assumes not acting compliant, dependent, or submissive, and not being effeminate in physical appearance or mannerisms (Herek 1986:568) (Frese 82). Esta binaria división sexual tiene graves consecuencias culturales. Su inversa relación becomes not just a difference in identities but also a qualitative and quantitative difference in status between genders. Because of the opposition, and in fact enhanced by it, one gender comes to dominate and control the

16 11 other (Frese 83). A diferencia de su ilustración, el patriarca supera la degradación femenina. Según Pamela Frese, sus instituciones are [ ] directing and delimiting [in] both men s and women s lives. [ ] Although there is no question that women and children have consistently been on the bottom of the social, political and hierarchy, and their lives particularly limited, men have been constrained by their expected roles as well. Like women, they have been limited by what they were not (according to social norm) allowed to do, and also by the duties they were expected to perform as part of the gender identity. (55) Según Halberstam, Masculinity in this society almost immediately conjures up notions of power and legitimacy and privilege; it often symbolically refers to the power of the state and to uneven distributions of wealth. Masculinity seems to extend outward into patriarchy and inward into the family; masculinity represents the power of inheritance, the consequences of the traffic in women, and the promise of social privilege. But, obviously, many other lines of identification traverse the terrain of masculinity, dividing its power into complicated differentials of class, race, sexuality and gender. (2) Justo como la sexualidad, el patriarca tiene una metódica institución cultural. Por lo tanto, pocos estudios trascienden su arraigada prescripción social. Consideramos a Plato, él cual ofrece insights which can also be seen as challenging [the] binary divide. [Although] he primarily identified men as having more developed souls and caring less for the

17 12 life of the body; [ ] he allowed for the possibility of an atypical philosopherruler type of female with a female body but a male soul, and for an opposite which he typified as a cowardly soldier- a male with a man s body but a female soul. Ambiguity is neither ruled out nor ignored but the possibility is acknowledged of individuals whose bodies do not match with their souls. (Suthrell 125) Aunque reconoce un tipo de tercer género ambiguo, incluso Plato privilegia lo masculino. Conforme a Halberstam, all too many studies that currently attempt to account for the power of white masculinity recenter this white male body by concentrating all their analytical efforts on detailing the forms and expressions of white male dominance (2,3). La resistencia supera el mero reconocimiento del dominio. En vez de su reconstitución, tenemos que destruir las arraigadas nociones de la masculinidad. Precisamente because white male masculinity has obscured all other masculinities we have to turn away from its construction to bring other more mobile forms of masculinity to light (Halberstam 16). Visto que Greek and Roman thought has been particularly influential in the development of Western thought, it is hardly surprising that we have inherited very strictly delineated notions of binarism with regard to gender, sex and sexuality (Suthrell 125). Por lo tanto, la prescripción sexual ha tenido graves repercusiones sociales. A pesar de su precisa constitución cultural, in no way is the T.V. (transvestite) encouraged to develop his/her inclinations, to express them publicly and to politicize them into a rejection of the system which produced the need for them (Riddell, 197, p.10) (King 19).

18 13 Conforme a su ilustración, la conciencia perpetúa la marginalización. De acuerdo con Jacobo Schifter, existen [groups] of boys who realized very early in their lives that they were different from most of their friends and classmates. In short, their femininity set them apart from others in their peer group. [...] Once their male classmates realized that these boys were different, they would start to tease and harass them, strengthening their self-awareness in the process. For this reason, transvestites tend to become aware of their homosexuality much earlier than other gay men do. They tend to undergo sexual initiation at an earlier age as well. (21) Elisa, una de las dragas del estudio, nos explica, I came out at seventeen, though men were taking advantage of me since I was a little boy [ ] They can see that you re effeminate and so they start giving you candy so that they can fondle you, they give you presents so that they can have you (Schifter 21). Según Schifter, la prostitución demands of the individual a psychological orientation in which one is able to detach oneself emotionally from the trauma associated with the job. When this is combined with near-continuous harassment on the part of the police and general public, drugs serve as a way of anesthetizing oneself from the pain (95). Como consecuencia, muchas veces los travestis están sujetos a la explotación sexual. Su matrona, Valentina, es testigo de la violación del sirenito, allí lo vio, con el pantalón a media pierna, con las manos encrespadas, con el calzoncillo ensangrentado Y lloró, lloró con él. [ ] Lloró mientras discutía con el taxista que no les quería llevar, porque le mancharían el carro de sangre y quién iba a pagar después el carwash. [ ] Aceleraron lo más que pudieron hasta llegar

19 14 al hospital. [ ] se dijo Valentina, mentir como jamás había mentido. Tirarse el performance de su vida para salvarle la suya a su amiguito. (Santos-Febres 86) Aunque Selena se tiende a punto de la muerte, el taxista se inquieta más con su tapicería. Conforme a su ilustración, la baja asignación social del travesti invita su menosprecio. Por lo tanto, aún con the violence directed toward them, it is the transvestites themselves who are accused of being dangerous criminals [ ] It is the same old story- blame the victim and in so doing avoid addressing the real issues at hand. [ ] In all cases, marginalization and persecution are justified through a twisted logic which transforms victims into the authors of their own misfortune. (Schifter 58) El cambio social can happen through some kind of disruption or displacement of the sex/gender system. That s where transgendered people come in, located within this framework as those who successfully challenge the status quo and point out a new way of going forward (Namaste 6). De acuerdo con su ilustración la resistencia singular tiene una resonancia colectiva. En cuanto al travestismo, el próximo capítulo intenta su tratamiento desde adentro (el individuo) hacia afuera (la sociedad). Conforme a Suthrell, Given the significance of clothing as the artefact closest to our bodies, transvestism thus informs our understanding of the social construction of the body. [ ] in the sense that cultural values are imposed on it- [the body] is socially formed (and deformed). [Each] individual body can represent coded social meanings, so that the body is an object of formation. [ ] transvestites are the embodiment both of the

20 15 material culture items they wear and of the cultural values which obsess them and yet are forbidden. (136)

21 16 CAPITULO 3 LA AUTO-AFIRMACION SEXUAL EN LAS OBRAS DE CATALINA DE ERAUSO Y MAYRA SANTOS-FEBRES Conforme a Radtke, resistance, like power, is not static, monolithic or chronological; there is no one resistance, but rather infinite multiplicities of strategic resistances (57). Justo como las formas de poder, son varias las estrategias con que uno se autoriza. A pesar de sus diversa actuación, el dilema se comparte. De acuerdo con Foucault, more often one is dealing with mobile and transitory points of resistance, producing cleavages in a society that shift about, fracturing unities and effecting regroupings, furrowing across individuals themselves, cutting them up and remolding them, marking off irreducible regions in them, in their bodies and minds. Just as the network of power relations ends by forming a dense web that passes through apparatuses and institutions, without being exactly localized in them, so too the swarm of points of resistance traverses social stratifications and individual unities. (96) En cuanto a la rebelión, inclusas sus manifestaciones singulares responden a una marginalización colectiva. Por lo tanto, la auto-afirmación es una negociación tanto personal como cultural. Según Namaste, los individuales transgenéricos will see their bodies, identities, and lives as part of a broader process of social change, of disrupting the sex/gender binary (6). En cuanto al travestismo, este capitulo considera su capacidad

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